Network browsing applications allow a computer user to view the contents of a network. Some network browsing applications, like Windows Explorer distributed by the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., focus on specific types of networks and/or files. For example, Windows Explorer is primarily oriented toward browsing files in a local area network. Other network browsing applications, such as Netscape Navigator, distributed by Netscape Corporation of Mountain View, Calif., or Internet Explorer, distributed by the Microsoft Corporation, allow users to install “plug-in” applications that allow the network browsing application to work with additional file types. Additional examples of network browsing applications, referred to herein as “browsing applications” for simplicity, include, without limitation, internet browsers, mail programs with browsing capabilities, file-sharing applications, and any application which provides the capability to browse resources either on an external network (e.g., the internet) or an internal network. Such applications may be separate from or integrated into an operating system.
Many browsing application developers have focused their development efforts in the manner described above in an effort to meet certain market needs. Unfortunately, while the developers have greatly enhanced underlying browsing application functionality, they have not spent much time enhancing the user interface and related features associated with browsing applications.
One such feature is the browsing application's foreign language display capabilities. Many browsers have historically struggled to display non-ASCII characters, including pictographs, ideograms and cuneiform characters such as those used in many Asian languages and Middle Eastern languages. Given the difficulty browsers faced simply displaying such characters, it is little wonder that efforts to enhance the browsing application's multi-lingual capabilities have been slow to mature.
By way of example, browsing applications cannot perform linguistic translation. At best, language translation can be performed through software running on the user's computer, such as Systran 5.0, distributed by Systran Language Translation Systems of Paris, France, or Lec, distributed by Language Engineering Company, LLC of Belmont, Mass., or via a server-based web page, such as http://babelfish.altavista.com or http://dictionary.reference.com/translate. However, even where the translation is performed by a server-based web page, the user must navigate away from the current web page before the translation can be initiated. This is, at the least, inconvenient for the user.
What is needed is a means through which a user can more readily translate an entire page, or portion thereof, that is displayed in a browsing application.